


Striking a Bargain

by OceanTheSoulRebel



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Remember kids: don't strike deals without knowing the terms, harm has happened to Anders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-06
Updated: 2019-02-06
Packaged: 2019-10-23 15:17:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17685947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OceanTheSoulRebel/pseuds/OceanTheSoulRebel
Summary: Anders is on the run and finds himself in trouble... and in Flemeth's sights.





	Striking a Bargain

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kittenmarsh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittenmarsh/gifts).



He wakes up in bits and spurts, the Fade clinging desperately to his mind.  
  
Sound, Anders registers first. Crackling leaves rattle the frayed edges of his consciousness like warning bells. Somewhere someone murmurs, the words garbled and indistinct. Soft footsteps draw near.  
  
Touch, too, comes, in its own time. Fabric that chafes against raw skin. Gravity pressing him against the earth. The weight of his tongue in his mouth, how his hands curl at his side. Something burns along his abdomen when he shifts and he bites his lip; the barest touch of teeth on chapped, split skin is more violent than any Templar’s blade.  
  
Blood trickles, and soon taste bludgeons its way to the forefront for recognition. Elemental iron, coppery and tangy and brackish on his tongue. The way the air has dried his mouth to rival the blight-born Anderfellan deserts.  
  
“You’re awake. Good.” A voice. Someone is with him--Hawke? Not Hawke, no; Hawke stayed in Kirkwall, had armed him with the coat off their back and their own prized dagger and a threat-laced plea never to return.  
  
He groans, throat hoarse from disuse, or perhaps overuse. He isn’t sure, it just aches in soul-deep _agony._  
  
“Wh--who…” He briefly tries to open his eyes, only to be met by a wave of nausea that crawls up his gullet like a demon. They close.  
  
“Girl, the flask.”  
  
“Yes, Flem—mother,” a second voice says.  
  
Another sense kicks into gear: _panic._  
  
His heart creeps into his throat as he’s lifted by the shoulders, and whatever burned in his belly flares like the lava that floods the darkened floors of the Deep Roads. A bitten-off scream tears from his throat.  
  
“Dramatic,” the first voice says, closer now, and he can’t bring himself to open his eyes to look. A flask is roughly pressed to his lips and dribbles water into his arid mouth, and he only saves himself from drowning when his throat convulses on instinct at the intrusion.  
  
“Look at me, boy,” she says, the order clear, and he does when a hand grips his chin to force his face up.  
  
She’s no different than when he laid eyes on her years ago, even though she wavers and splits into two before him. Eerie amber eyes peer dispassionately at his face, framed by the thick burnished metal headpiece at her brow. Her hair still rises like dragonbone from her face, somehow part of and separate still from her warrior’s crown. Her lips twist in a cruel smile.  
  
“Flemeth,” Anders breathes, voice thin as a river reed as it scratches over his tongue. His gut quakes at her nearness.  
  
“The very same.” Her eyes dart over his head, and she releases his chin. The flask returns and he is no better prepared the second time.  
  
His gaze never leaves her.  
  
“You remember me. Good. I enjoy people with their wits about them.”  
  
She struts away and Anders tilts his head back to look up at the other woman, who eyes him with those same uninterested amber eyes. Another daughter, then? Or is this the one she mentioned when they met at the Sundermount altar?  
  
He isn’t sure if he wants to know, all things considered.  
  
“What to do with you…”  
  
Flemeth’s idle musing catches his attention and sends his heart racing. _Oh Maker, oh Andraste…_ She turns toward him, eyes bright and that knife-sharp smile creasing her features but never making it to her eyes.  
  
“I have a bargain for you, boy,” she says. “Will you do an old woman the favor of hearing her out?”  
  
Anders coughs and clears his throat. “Produce an old woman and I might,” he jokes weakly. She only arches a brow and he hurries to nod. “Yes, I’ll… I’ll hear your bargain.”  
  
It might be a foolish agreement, but even sheltered Circle mages, raised far from the wilds of anywhere, know better than to trifle with the legendary Witch of the Wilds.  
  
“Smart lad,” she says drily. “You’re dying. You know that, don’t you?” Flemeth comes closer, crouching once more to put them roughly face to face. “A run-in with some backwoods mage-hunter. Not even a real Templar. What a shame.”  
  
“She didn’t know what she was doing,” he mutters. “She… I don’t think she knew what she was doing, and I didn’t want to hurt her.”  
  
“But you did.”  
  
“Yes,” he whispers. “To survive.”  
  
Flemeth’s gaze goes curious. “You’ll do a lot to survive,” she observes as if discussing the weather. “You and your passenger. But you didn’t heal yourself. Couldn’t. I can fix that, of course.”  
  
His body still burns from the mage-hunter’s weapons, concentrated magebane and poison alike coating her blades and arrows. For as prepared as she was, she was sloppy. Anders’ hand rises to the arrowhead that still lies burrowed in his rib cage.  
  
He closes his eyes. Her body rests somewhere in the forest, somewhere between her small town and here--wherever here is. He can’t quite remember, but it won’t be important for much longer.  
  
“Magebane.”  
  
She hums. “Tricky thing, that.”  
  
“You said you had a bargain. If it’s something you want from me before I die, you might want to hurry.” His tongue is reckless, dropping words faster than his mind can weigh them for danger. “If it’s my heart you’re after, you’ll have to be disappointed; I’ve already promised that to another.”  
  
Flemeth barks out a laugh, the sound jarring as it is melodious. “The pretty bird in the City of Chains. They’ve made it their own personal cage, haven’t they? Not that you didn’t help in that regard.” She chuckles again and he can hear the smirk in her voice. Her hand brushes his pauldron-clad shoulder. “Tell me, feather mage, would you do it again, if you could go back and change your little plans? Or would you fly away?”  
  
Hawke? Would he…? Anders frowns. No, that’s not what she is asking. Justice swells at the edges of his mind, steadying the shake in his hands amid visions of blood-red light.  
  
“Again. And again, and again after that.”  
  
He opens his eyes and sees the Fade ripple and dance around them both.  
  
_“Good,”_ Flemeth says, voice terrible and echoing and  _vast_ , and the Fade swallows her whole, revealing only her glowing eyes and reaching hand.  
  
A scream tears from his throat. Every mote of his being _burns,_ unfamiliar magic forcing its way into his blood, pounding like a drum in time with his heart. His skin feels too small, too fragile, for the way she rips into his ribs with her talon-like nails.  
  
An eternity later she rocks back from him and he slumps, breathless and half-dead against the woman who props him up. Flemeth examines the remains of the poisoned arrow with polite curiosity before incinerating it in her hand.  
  
“Such a trifling thing, isn’t it?” she asks. “Bodies. So fragile, so restrictive.”  
  
“So you’ve mentioned,” Anders garbles out. The lava fades from his flesh and he can feel the weak ebbing of mana once more, comforting and cool in his veins. He bats his hand weakly at the flask but it’s pressed to his lips once more. This time he’s able to keep himself from drowning on dry land, so it’s a small measure of progress.  
  
The water is soon pulled away and he smacks his lips once, twice, relishing the feeling, before turning his wary eyes to Flemeth. “You said you had a bargain,” he said carefully, “and I’m assuming you just held up your end of it.”  
  
She laughs again. “What a smart lad you are. I think I might like you.”  
  
_Knickerweasels._  
  
“I have something I need you to deliver for me. Ah, what is it about you Fereldans making such good couriers?”

She manifests a length of finely wrought chain from… _somewhere,_ and Anders isn’t sure he wants to investigate how. A nail scrapes along her palm to strike a shallow cut, blood welling at an alarming rate for how minor the wound is. She blows on her hand and it solidifies; a glancing touch with the chain and it becomes a pendant, a bloody ruby hanging freely.  
  
“Another necklace,” he says glibly as she places it over his head, speaking again before he can catch himself. “Do I need to find more Dalish elves?”  
  
“Just one,” she answers. “A Senior Enchanter in Cumberland. You’ll find him and deliver it for me, won’t you? Do an old woman this small favor?”  
  
Cumberland. Where in the Void was he? He retraces his steps mentally, almost two months on his own. He had been going… north, then east. He thinks. He isn’t sure. “Where am I now?” Anders asks with hesitation.  
  
“Good question,” she muses. “Where _are_ you?”  
  
With that Flemeth stands, brushing imaginary dirt off her armor. The woman beneath him, so still and complacent to her mother’s demands, shifts and helps him sit up fully. Anders watches as they step away--oh, he’s in a small clearing. When did he get here?

He raises his hands to his eyes against the brilliant flare of light that sweeps over him and in a breath, they are gone, a giant high dragon taking wing with what can only be described as an amused roar.

Anders surveys the clearing tiredly. He barely manages to set the barest of wards before he falls unconscious once more, one arm curled protectively over his ribcage and the other clutching at the amulet. 

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on tumblr at [ocean-in-my-rebel-soul!](https://ocean-in-my-rebel-soul.tumblr.com)
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> Comments and concrit always appreciated! Thank you for reading!


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